THE MOURNING DOVE CAWS

At the rate I’m going it seems I’ll be doing about one book review/month. I wish the number could be higher, but the nature of this endeavor requires revisiting countless highlighted sections of text & notes written in the margins that often take more time to decipher and understand than it did to originally read the book! Ok, not really, but close. What is true though is that I want to be as responsible with literature as I possibly can; being objective and accurate in my presentations & assessment is no small task. My only presuppositions are those tied to a strict evangelical Christian worldview. So I must approach this task with humility, concern, but also a sense of duty. I will tend to (without promising not to renig) write about books that I think a) are helpful for you read, or b) you are reading and should be cautious about. Let’s move forward.

About the Author

J.P. Moreland is a professor at Talbot School of Theology, a division of Bioala University in California. He is renown for his work in Christian apologetics and philosophy. Among his other influential works that I particularly enjoyed and found helpful are Scaling the Secular City, Love Your God With All Your Mind, Does God Exist?, and the monumental reference work Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview. He has founded, co-founded, and pastored many churches and has engaged in numerous apologetic debates.

Moreland, J.P. Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the Spirit’s Power. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007.
225 pages including bibliography & end notes.

This work is important because he is writing specifically to the church with a call to do what the subtitle directs. In other words, Moreland feels what he has to say is important, in fact, vital for the church to restore its impact on Western civilization. The text is written primarily to the Western church because in the third world, as of yet, the church is growing in numbers and influence (he has many statistics throughout). So the Western church has been losing ground to Secular Humanism, Religious Pluralism, Islam, Eastern thought etc. because following the Enlightenment Christians have withdrawn from academia (“Recover the Christian Mind”), have not been progressing in holiness & discipleship (“Renovate the Soul”), and stopped believing in the supernatural miracles of God as normative in the life of the church (“Restore the Spirit’s Power”).

Let’s acknowledge from the beginning that this 3-pronged packaging is not found explicitly in the Bible. Nowhere does one passage speak on knowledge, virtue, and miraculous signs & wonders as the necessary compontents for a conquering church. But to hold this against the book is to beg the question; the case for this is made throughout. Also, just in case the term “kingdom” somehow seems foreign or unrelevant to you, I encourage you to reread the Gospels and note what it is that Jesus was preaching. Moreland returns to the use of this term in the spirit of Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy.

Moreland appropriately divided the book into two sections: “Assessing the Crisis of Our Age” & “Charting A Way Out: The Kingdom Triangle.” He first offers a diagnosis of our current state, making the case that our culture is moving toward a point of crisis (i.e. cannot continue on the way it is) and that the damage is a direct result of naturalistic & postmodern worldviews that have permeated our culture. His treatments of these worldviews are not new, but that does not matter. They are weighty, must be followed carefully, and serve as important premises to his thesis. He ends Part 1 with five steps that facilitated this regression; we have shifted our focus…

From knowledge to faith
From human flourishing to satisfaction and desire
From duty and virtue to minimalistic ethics
From classic freedom to contemporary freedom
From classic tolerance to contemporary tolerance

Part 2 offers the solution to the problem. Here he rightly argues for the important role that knowledge plays in the life of the believer, demonstrating this through scripture (he quotes 6 straight pages of passages that reveal the importance of knowledge in the Christian faith experience!). Part of the problem lies in Christian leaders’ creation of a false dichotomy between faith & knowledge, and the theology of liberal Protestantism which attempted to do away with the historical accessibility of scripture’s accounts (especially the resurrection). Next Moreland discusses the superiority of Christian virtues as opposed to those of atheism and other ideologies, and guides the Christian into ways he/she can grow in obedience to God. Part of his strategy was demonstrating how denying the self is in fact more satisfactory than the moral theory known as hedonism. Lastly, the book gets into the subject that is more touchy for evangelicals: the charismatic gifts. He approaches the issue with grace and sensitivity, but does not back away from his convictions. An argument is made for the charismatic gifts by insisting they are part of the nature of God’s kingdom & by using personal stories as testimonies.

The book is concluded with a chapter restating his thesis and offers an exhortation for the church.

Strengths

Discussion/reflection questions are offered at the end of each chapter
Great annotated bibliography divided into beginner, intermediate, & advanced which points the reader to great works on the topics covered (I’ve already book-listed some of them!)
Moreland continues to write with a graceful, but shrewd “to-the-point” style
Useful discussion of our human craving for “drama,” which can be satisfied in living a virtue of duty and self-denial (p. 26)
Good treatment/overview of worldviews & ideologies such as naturalism, postmodernism, and utilitarianism (p. 50)
Great tracing of universities slipping into epistemological subjectivity in the chapter on postmodernism
Good treatment on knowledge & certainty and how to respond to the skeptic (p. 121)
Offers examples of miraculous gifts in operation today that move the heart to glorify God

Weaknesses

Does not offer the expected (none, actually) counterexamples in his treatment of minimalistic ethics (p. 52)
States that the word “happiness” used in the Declaration of Independence refers to virtue and character, not pleasure, while not presenting a complete argument for this (p. 94)
Does not satisfactorily refute minimalist ethics in his second treatment (p. 96)
Argues for the physical heart as a center for intellectual reflection (like the brain) with little support besides one end-note reference
Uses what I consider to be a weak interpretation of Philippians 4:6-7. My understanding: the distinction of “heart” and “mind” can be a literary device known as parallelism, which draws emphasis to a term, or Paul may simply be further nuancing the heart (being) with mind
Proposes Christians practice a physical heart meditation exercise similar to eastern meditation techniques which might just scare many evangelicals. Like Mark Driscoll, many may rant “If it’s not biblical, it’s demonic!” I can see the usefulness of such an exercise, but honestly, I’d rather be doing other things (p. 160)
Does little in the way of biblical exegesis when arguing for the existence of the charismatic gifts

If that seemed like a super rigid review it’s because that’s what the book is like! And the author warns us of that: his writing is heavy, and that’s because we must exercise the use of our mind if we are to regain our footing in this battle for truth (see how that makes sense?)! Don’t stop reading because it’s hard to understand; press on, investigate its claims, and see how you can apply the teaching he advises to your Christian development. It’s well worth it. The most valuable things in life are fashioned by much time, energy, & effort. Love your God with all your mind! (Mark 12:30)

Moreland successfully showed how the Western church has slipped into an unhealthy comfort zone when it comes to knowledge, virtue, and the miraculous. He then equips the Christian to be able to join the rest of the church in regaining its influence & impact for the kingdom of God. Well worth the read.